Review: Jay Armstrong Johnson and Friends Wax Ebullient

The musical-theater world has always exhibited an enthusiastic community solidarity. But among Broadway aspirants in their 20s and early 30s, there’s an ebullient joie de vivre that has less to do with shared dreams of stardom than with generational camaraderie. That mood pervaded Wednesday’s opening night performance of Jay Armstrong Johnson’s cabaret show at Feinstein’s/54 Below, a sprawling musical potpourri that involved well over a dozen musicians, backup vocalists and guests.

A 28-year-old Texan who grew up on country music and gospel, Mr. Johnson made his Broadway debut in the 2009 revival of “Hair” as an understudy for Gavin Creel in the role of Claude, and has appeared in “On the Town, “Hands on a Hardbody” and “Catch Me If You Can.” He is involved in other projects, including Ryan Scott Oliver’s musical work in progress, “Darling,” which he described as “a dark deconstruction of ‘Peter Pan.’” Just how dark was suggested by “Lost Boy,” a song from that show whose style evoked the introspective side of Adam Guettel.

Mr. Johnson’s engaging performance, musically directed by Rodney Bush, was a getting-to-know-you event in which he recalled his early musical-theater experiences in church, his self-described “sanctuary from a macho, sports-obsessed culture. The 1993 movie “Sister Act 2,” he said, changed his life. One of the first concerts he attended starred Rascal Flatts.

It’s a giant leap from Rascal Flatts’s “Banjo” to Stephen Sondheim’s “Johanna” from “Sweeney Todd,” in which Mr. Johnson unfurled the full power of his voice in one of the most persuasive renditions of that song I can recall. Leading into “Johanna” was an impassioned rendition of Jeff Buckley’s ballad “Everybody Here Wants You,” a hyper-romantic plea to a woman with “a singing smile, coffee smell and lilac skin.” Equally impressive was his perfectly pitched duet with Amanda Williams Ware on the Alanis Morissette’s hit “Thank U.”

The more passion he poured into such ballads, the better he sounded; he has the gift.